August 25, 2013

Berlusconi holding Italy Hostage

A brilliant article on Berlusconi and the sorrow state of Italy by Tim Sparks can be read HERE

A brief summary below:

Vote me out of jail, or I will bring the country down with me. This,
essentially, is the message Silvio Berlusconi—four-time prime minister,
owner of the country’s three main commercial TV channels, criminal
defendant many times over—has just sent to the Italian government, one
that clarifies at last the exact nature of what is at stake in Italy at
the present moment: is this a modern state where the rule of law
prevails or is it the fiefdom of an institutionalized outlaw?

After a dozen trials, many of which have gone through all three levels
of Italian justice (primary trial, appeal, counter appeal), after making
ad personam laws to have his crimes de-penalized, or using delaying
tactics to have trials thrown out because the crimes alleged in them are
time-barred, or facing guilty verdicts at one level and acquittals at
another, Berlusconi has finally received a definitive and unappealable
criminal sentence at the highest level, for tax fraud in the region of
€7 million ($9 million) and for the creation of a slush fund of some
€280 million ($375 million). Sentenced to four years in prison, he has
benefited from a pardon aimed at emptying the country’s jails, which has
reduced the sentence to one year—this despite the fact that, being over
seventy, he will be allowed to serve his sentence at one of his various
luxury homes. However, as an elected member of the senate, he enjoys
immunity from arrest and cannot be forced into confinement until the
senate approves his expulsion, a vote that could take place in
September. He has now made it clear that if that vote goes against him
he will bring the whole house down.